I should be able to make itI know some of the EVS are intrested, make sure you talk to them as they don't read the bb sometimes.

If i can't make it:If the website is basically there, which from what I've seen I think it is, we should just launch. We could spend ages doing little tweaks till its perfect; there is always more you can do. We could waste months. Stuff it. Lets just go for it. Come on!

But anyway, as I said the other day I'm with James on this - get it live ASAP and then it'll get sorted out quickly enough.

The basic what-is-forest info is already there. That and upcoming events are the two crucial things as I see it. Copy the latest forest programme to the site before you go live with it, and then show the programme people how to update the site themselves after that.

Visually it would be nice to spice things up a bit but I don't think this is essential to start with. If people have ideas for how they'd like the site to look they can draw them up and we can turn them into themes later.

The problem is that there's no list of stuff that must be on the website, so there's no way to get it "finished". Meanwhile as long as the old site is up, people will keep adding stuff to that which will then be missing from the new site, making getting it ready an endless task.

At some stage the people who are responsible for updating various parts of the site are going to have to switch over to the new one and we need to somehow define when that happens - either in terms of a particular date, or in terms of the new site meeting some minimum requirements.

Meanwhile everyone wants the new site to look nice but nobody's giving anything to work with. If someone has a vision for how the site should look, show us what it looks like and we can make it happen - you don't need to know anything about websites to do this.

Websites never "Finish.".there is always more you can do on them and the list just carries on growing, especially if the old site is in use.I do this shit professionally, I've seen massively missed deadlines.

If were going to wait, we need a clearly defined list of things that are necessary which people can't add to, and we need FWG people to engage in a working manner with this. Milk has been trying to get people to do this and it just hasn't happened.

At the moment the new website has areas it is weak in, for instance, it doesn't look great. however, the problem is that only milk cares enough to actually work on it, and the work is going slowly because of that. If the new site is live, suddenly lots of people will care and it will look great very soon. we should have learnt by now that the way to get things done round here is to use the incredible volunteer power of the forest. lets use it.

hey! ok so this is my email to milk - i think the key thing is that it is simple, cool looking, and has a default 'timeline driven' cool front page (to avoid us being out of date all the time...)

ok milk! sorry this is a bit long..., probly worth cut and pasting to a text editor..

i have given the design some thought, and think i may have cracked it, and have some cunning ideas too.. it is a bit complicated, but also quite simple.. below i will try and explain my thinking and talk you through my design. i hope it is implementable, i would appreciate your thoughts - my explaination may be unclear, so maybe a talk thru in person would help?

first of all we have to consider:

1. who uses the website2. what they use it for3. what we want from it4. how we use it

answers:

1: a. people who want to know more about forest,b. people who already like us and come here, or came herec. and us.

2. a. - to see what we do/ who we are, how etc.. if it is cool or not, contact us - a lot of stuff basicallyb. - to find out whats on, see pictures, get contacts etc.c. - to represent ourselves well and make us look good, to get to the bb etc. and as above

3. excellent presentation, up to date, well written, to fulfil points above, with minimum maintenance and difficulty

4. historically, we are bad at updating the website (it often gets out of date and you go to events and it is events from two months ago etc...), as we are voluntary this is unlikely to change, therefore i feel we need a good looking webiste that is timeline driven and defaults to a standard (but cool) homepage as posts and events expire..

Ok.. i hope you agree with these above thoughts, so first things first, check out my homepage design [front_page_1.jpg] and i shall talk you through it.

NOTE: the site has a maximum width - this is standard in pro websites (check bbc guardian znet etc.) and aids layout design etc.

TOP BAR:

where it says 'mish mash gallery' this would be a link to this best pics gallery - this is a gallery maintained by us, click on a pic you get the next one, with an option of thumbnails etc. pretty standard really.

menu -drop down (if possible?), if not then like on the filmhouse menu..

MAIN TOP SECTION:

this would be a default front page, everytime the page is loaded a new random image would appear in the main section, these images are selected from the 'mish mash - gallery' (this is the best of forest pics, which i am re-doing, some dodgy photos have crept into it on the current website, and it doesnt have any new awesome ones, but i've almost finished updating it.. its gonna be good!).

TECHNICAL POINTS: some thought is required on the auto sizing of images, obviously the pictures in the gallery can be all different sizes, so it could be tricky. i think square and landscape pictures can fit full width (as shown), but portrait pictures can go side by side (as shown: front_page_5_portraits.jpg).

If a user has text to go in this main section (but no picture), there should be a way to do it so it just goes in a grey see-thru box floating on top of the picture (like here front_page_2_with_text.jpg, or front_page_3_with_text.jpg), or drop shadow or something. this text would have an expiry date - so after that time it vanishes (this keeps us looking fresh and up-to-date)

IF a user has something to replace these auto pictures (a poster or something), that is cool, but you have to give it an expiry date, after the expiry date this entry would go to a history somewhere and the defualt page comes back. this picture posting would have a choice of sizes, full width, half width left, right etc.. (and look like this say: front_page_4_event_example.jpg )

If entries like this could also be prompted for event dates, then they could auto be added to the events listing thing..

i have given some thought to the structure too, but hey, one thing at a time!

suggested implementation schedule:

implement front page - get it so we happy with it.sort out structureredesign each page one by one from current website (a lot of cut and pasting, some rewording, and sticking some better pictures in sometimes), fair amount of work, but not too bad..check all usability etc..check on different machines etc..fixesrelease!website party!!hurray!!!

cheers,

Chris xxx

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Maybe it could work? But it will be a kaleidoscopic blend of mysterious shadows and rainbow hued-dreams seen through compassionate tears.

i spoke to milk, and he says to implement a cool design template for the website (whether is my design or someone elses) requires someone who is great at php and css (not the band) to make it happen... Milk does not have these skills, so until someone arrives who does, its kinda stuck...

xx Chris

Maybe it could work? But it will be a kaleidoscopic blend of mysterious shadows and rainbow hued-dreams seen through compassionate tears.

ive been busy copying forest records stuff from the old/current site to the new/drupal system.

main thing that interests me is how to add products to the virtuemart - if we are going to continue using that. milk, if you have a minute can you brief me?also, the virtuemart http://www.theforest.org.uk/virtuemart/37/ shop doenst seem to be hooked up to the new drupal driven site (which presently only has 3 items: http://theforest.org.uk/drupal5/catalog/26/books). i think this is a priority: before the new site "goes live" we should have a nice functional shop. thinking again about the forest records section of the site - some kind of player for people to be able to hear tracks online would be great.

it's still happening, i've just had more pressing issues to deal with recently, though my to do list has become drastically shorted in just the last month. fantastic, you're the first interested party that has gotten as far as avatar.

short term plans;* contact other interested web developers regarding theme creation (we're looking to have multiple themes) including the scottish drupal users group (who i mentioned to james)* continue porting content across from the old site. anyone can do this btw (thanks dirk!)

mid term plans;* get the shop and mp3 jukebox fixed. the main problem is that, even though php 4 support has been discontinued and the last php 4 release (4.4.9) came out on the 7th of august, our server is still running 4.4.7 and there are some specific drupal modules that require php 5 (well, not our server so we can't sort it without paying the faceless server admin a fee).* um, more, it's too late right now to think about...

gaah, a change of hosting company would be good, but migrating all the server side stuff (mail, etc also) would be a right pain...

hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

milk wrote:gaah, a change of hosting company would be good, but migrating all the server side stuff (mail, etc also) would be a right pain...

Such is always the way, I found. For that very reason, I gave up on hosted companies about 3 years ago and got my own server, which is sat in a rack in a datacentre in France. Now I have complete control over everything and it's fantastic!

hey,so the css and the php is finebut i don't know how the drupal5 templating system worksfor various reasons I just don't have time to learn. There are whole books on this topic, it clearly isn't trivial.I contacted the scottish drupal users group to try to arrange something, but nothing has happened yetif chaos had time to pick this up that would be great and much appreciated by everyone, I'm sure.

php4.4.7!?really. that's very serious. there will be no more security releases for php4 ever, you realise? we need to sort something.a fee? how do they justify charging thatmaybe its time to jump to a new server - if were going to have to pay a sum of money anyway.all options are worth looking at

fairly nuff. would you be able to ask how much the fee for the change would be? an upgrade to the current stable of apache (1.3.39 to 1.3.41) would also be nice. for our info, how much/often do we pay for the space anyway? thanks.

hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

he was faceless in that no-one knew who he was until now ... good to know, thankssorry if I sounded harsh, but really no-one should be touching php4 with a barge pole after aug 08.can you ask him? thanksapache 2? apache 1 stable is still decent and is supported, no need for extra hassle on that front I reckon.

ive manged to get my local install working of drupal on comp working again .. i messed about with an existing theme . it a start ! ive included it here . it only works on drupal 6 . i cant really find a theme that suits what we want for 5 .

am not really into the sidebar . would prefer if it was just all content and menu where at the top . maybe someone can mess with it a bit more.

hope this helps

martin

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in fact ,i quite like the side bar , it seems more logical than horizontal one . although the way chris has in the images is really nice . it looks good and saves space . , also having a big image underneath it on the front page look amazing . but maybe we can use this theme in the meantime until someone can do these things .

one thing that i would like fixed is that the header image is too low . could do with being moved up a bit . other than that it looks good .

milk are we currently on 5 , i remember you where saying something about 6 .